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Warwick Guide as of Most recent Patch!

+This guide and thread are no longer maintained, however for the new warwick user and jungler it is still incredibly helpful+

So I originally wrote this guide because I wanted people to know how to jungle easily. But since the last and patch and the many buffs Warwick received in it, i now write this guide to show people how to win with Warwick. If one knows the basic idea, rotations and creep order he is actually incredibly easy to play and an asset to the team. The hard part is figuring that stuff out, which, after about a million practice games, and a few time motion studies I have (I hope) perfected how to do it. Anyways, this is my guide to Jungle Warwicking, I have only wrote one guide before this and this is the update of that, so please don't be too harsh.

Why play Junglewick?

There are two main reasons to jungle. The first reason doesn't really have to do with you at all: The team gets an extra solo! I have been Q dodged many times for jungling, but in reality having two solos actually helps the team tremendously, especially when the game has progressed to gank phase, or team fight phase.(Especially since the level balancing that came in the last patch) The 2v1 doesn't really affect you other than they will play overconfident and once you reach level six that is where you are most likely to get a successful gank. ( I personally recommend Nunu, Heimer, or Cho Gath for the 2v1 Lane, but in all honestly if they play defensive and take advantage of the other teams overconfidence it doesn't really matter.)

The second reason to Jungle is because during midgame you literally will rape face (if you pick your targets right) which will hopefully snowball you into late game, but more on that later.

Lastly, a small disclaimer before I start the actual guide: If you get ganked by the other team before level 3, I strongly recommend just laning, you can still do well with my build and because of the patch changes he is still a very viable laning partner especially with a stunner. Because if they have a stealthier or clairvoyance and know what you're up to, then the game will just be a pain in the butt.

Alright, and now for the actual guide:

Summoner Spells:

Rally and Smite

Runes:

For Quintessent get cooldown reduction so you can spam hungering strike! Red=Armor Pen, Yellow=dodge, Blue=Cooldown reduction per level.

No points Here, so you can get Utility Mastery and Awareness
Utility:
3/3 Perseverance
1/3 Good hands
(You can switch Perseverance and good hands if you want, i know the regen is marginal but i find it useful for the jungling phase, however good hands can definitely make or break games, it's really up to you)
4/4 Awareness
1/2 Utility Mastery
(Both Utility Mastery and Awareness are huge factors in jungling sucessfully)

I level hungering strike as my primary or Blood Scent, depending on how well the team is doing. I do this because even after the patch blood scent scales better than hunter's call and hungering strike is awesome for staying power in group fights. Also if you pick a squishy target, one ulti plus hungering strike and a auto attack will usually get them below 50% so you can use blood scent to chase them down.

Items:
(You must get them in this order, and in the order that I outline the parts because that is how my rotation of creeps is built- trust me, it's the fastest way)
Starting:
1.Cloth Armor and 2 Health potions(No more, no less)
First time Blue Pilling:
2. Long Sword/Madred's Razor Pattern/Boots Level 1, 3. Vampric Scepter

After that Since the rotation will not be a factor go back at your leasure, but you have alot of staying power if you keep grabbing golem so i would recomend only going back when you die unless you got boat loads of cash)

4. Boots of Swiftness pattern

( If your team is feeding a stunner/caster I recommend Mercury Treads here instead, but I get swiftness instead of berserkers because attack speed is so easy to grab while move speed is not, plus for chasing down squishes the extra move speed helps allot, also moving across the map to set up a gank makes a difference of 3-7 secs depending on where your coming from)
Now at this point your jungling rotation should be pretty basic/should involve a lot of ganking so the time to buy/order to buy the parts is up to you and will also depend on how the game is going, but I would do it in this order)

5. Madred's Bloodrazer
6. Bloodthirster
7. Zeal
8. Infinity edge
9. Phantom Dancer
10. Black cleaver (never had a game where I was doing well get to BC, you could exchange trinity force for more move speed/chasing down capabilities, here if you want, it shouldn't really matter at this point)

Now for the fun to begin...HOW TO ACTUALLY DO IT:
Jungling Start:

See my map attached at the bottem of the page for the places on the map to be associated with the number I have labeled/am talking about.

1. Start of by first turret on the golem of your side and wait till 5 seconds before Golem spawns to start running towards point , golem camp. (You wait at the tower to make any Stealthers or Clairvoyancers think that you are not Jungling and as a result they will probably leave you alone the rest of the game.) Anyways grab hungering strike first and open with smite, then a hungering strike, pop health potion 1 and auto attack until you can hungering strike again and then kill him and his minions.
2. Next head to the wolf/small golem camp at point 2. You will be level so grab hunter's call and spam abilities to get them down because you now have golem buff.
3. Head to the lifestealer camp at 3, you smite may or may not be off cooldown depending on crits/your rune page, if it is off cooldown use it on the blue guy, it should one shot him. If not then use hunter's call and hungering strike to get them down. You should be level 3 now...grab hungering strike rank 2.
4. head to Lizard camp and drop rally and pop health potion number 2. Again, spam abilities targeting the big lizard first and then his minions, if you didn't use smite before use it now.
5. head to the other wolf/golem camp at point 5 and kill them too.
6. Head to the other teams golem across the water but be wary of MIA's on the other team. Kill golem, about halfway through smite should come off cool down. Use it. (Watch to see if the lane your close to is ideal for a gank, you will have blood scent by now and should be able to get someone down if they are laning low, but don't do it if your going have to wait for the set up, it will take too much time.)
7. Then head to their small golem camp and kill those guys spamming abilities again
8. Head back to the life stealer camp and kill those guys too, again using all abilities possible because of golem. Hurry because you will need golem for dragon.
9. Head to the small golem camp small golem camp by your teams golem(only creeps spawned on your side at this point)
10. just as you finish those golems, the other golems on your team will resurrect and head to 10 to go kill those again, NOTE: you will have smite up, SAVE it for dragon!
11. Killing dragon by 8 minutes and getting level 6 is the basic goal of all Warwick's, with my guide you should easily accomplish this. Use smite and spam abilities, golem should run out right before you kill him.( My personal record is down by 7:47 but at that point your slightly restricted by creep respawns- if you get better definitely tell me)

BLUEPILL NOW-if you got a gank when you headed across the river to get their dragon, if not head to point 12!

12. Kill the lifestealers and then BLUEPILL NOW unless mid is set up for a gank. if it is then gank and head home.

Now it is time to shop, buy Razor, Vampric, and basic boots and head out. This is where the ganking and fun begins!

Mid Game:

Ok so now that your six, hopefully you can figure out how to do the same relative creep rotation. With your Ulti and hungering strike you should be able to get any squishy hero down to less than half health and with blood scent and a little team mate help it should be gg. Especially if they are at lower health. (NOTE: Really important you go for low health and squishy heroes during this phase, you're not yet strong enough to take on a cho gath or a mundo who has an ulti up) By squishy I mean a hero that has lower base health i.e. corki, fiddle ashe, tris, shaco ect. however these easier to kill heroes have escapes usually so make sure your team know your coming in and can stun/slow accordingly. This phase is really really easy: just run back and forth across your side of the map looking for heroes on their team that are low and jungling your way towards them.
A good way to do this, is ping the hero you plan on ganking before you start jungling towards them, that way your ulti will be on cool down because you took longer to get there, and your teammates can set up the gank either by baiting or saving their stun/slow. (For Warwick to be really effective you need at least 2 kills and 2 assists during this phase, however you can still do well without it.
Doing really well here will give them the fear factor of you and when you're in a group fight some may run away because they are so scared, capitalize on the fact that they are spreading out and chase down/ focus fire the squishies who stayed in because Warwick brings nothing to a group fight other than a long cool down initiator (ulti) and a group attack speed buff* In some situatiosn you may want to save your ulti to disable the other teams carry or AOEer. IE Ryze or Nunu once they pop their Ultimates.
In summary: jungle your towards people, pop out gank, rinse and repeat, ps. golem is important in this phase as well as lizard because it will smooth out the ganking a lot. (Also with improved rally, if you have all five people on your team with you, you can Nashor at level 11-12, it will make a huge difference in the games proceeding at such a low level, however if it is a pug i don't recommend it because they always screw everything up)

End Game:

Now I am a big fan of Warwick and usually do rather well in kills with him, HOWEVER he is not a group fight hero so you have to be patient: he is also relatively squishy if he can't life steal to keep himself up. So, although your ulti is a good initiator for smaller fights, save it in the big fights till they are a couple seconds under way, also make sure to pop hunters call at the beginning of every group fight-important!
Even at this stage you don't have a ton of armor pen, and even if you have blood razor, you still need to pick your targets wisely, i.e. no poppy or singed, or Mord with full shield ect. You will be hitting pretty hard and attacking pretty fast so take every opportunity to backdoor*
*(since I was in a game with someone today who didn't know what backdooring is let me outline:*pushing a lane where the other teams focus is not* If people start MIAing though, make sure to run since your pretty easy to kill if its 2v1. You'll get a lot of gold from backdooring and Warwick is pretty item reliant. Also if anyone on their team is dumb enough to try and 1v1 you, drop rally and put it in them or go gank them if they are backdooring. Ulti, hungering strike hunters call and auto attack chase should kill most people,
And don't be afraid to tower dive at this stage(chasing someone down with blood scent and killing them under a tower's damege) Also, dropping improved rally during group fights is a huge plus, so because of your spec (improved rally) you actually do bring something to a group fight, it is just on a really ling cool down.
So in summary: Wait a second to jump into the fray in group fights, drop rally in all fights, kill people who are by themselves and backdoor farm whenever possible. Your team should theoretically be killing there's more often because your team had two solos and theirs did not. This is a huge advantage especially if both your solos have AOE spells.

In final note: The biggest plus of Junglewick is that it helps the team, you may turn out to be the carry if you get some lucky feeds, but more likely your two solos will be the people who win the game for you. An effective Junglewick relies on a halfway decent team and a good creep rotation. After 3 good games of my rotation and item builds you'll have it memorized and it will be easy to dominate games.

Final note: I am not bragging since I am actually not a spectacular player, but just to show how much Junglewick helps the team on Seventh my win Loss ratio right now is 31 wins 5 losses, my friend Emparch who helped me figure out the rotation is 57 and 33 so having a Junglewick does drastically help the team, but it is not necessarily because of you. Its because of what it enables the rest of the team to do.

Also LoL is a game where you need to be able to adapt, by in large this guide will work easily and for everyone but if a game is going out of control i.e. your winning/losing/lot of casters/ no casters you'll need to adapt to the situation obviously.

Feel free to post suggestions and Questions, like I said I am not an amazing player, and this is my first guide, So please don't bash me too hard. But the whole point of this guide is to show that Junglewick is easy mode if you follow the right rotation and build. Please rate and try it out for at least 3 games. If you do post how you did, any suggestions ect. Thanks! Also I would love to see if someone can get dragon down and be 6 before 7:30!

Just wanted to say thanks for this guide, it is one of the better ones I have read. Will provide some more feedback once I have been through it 10 or so times. I appreciate all the detail though. I suck at jungling with any champ in general so this is a great help.

Can you give a sense of what runes you are using in each? Armor Pen red I assume and you said Crit Dmg quints. Yellow and Blue are crit chance?

Also, unless I am stupid I don't see where you have summoner spells listed. You mention both smite and rally and also take the improved masteries for those, but it would just be easier if you had a section for summoner spells like your rune section.

Masteries: I really don't think the stuff in Offense above 9 points is worth losing out on everything you get in the Utility tree. Two points in Utility mastery is absolutely essential, and the 6% cooldown from Intelligence plus mana regen from Meditate means your Hungering Strike is up more often in the jungle and your ult is up more often for ganking, and you can support it all the time even when golem is lapsed. I would srtrongly suggest going 9/0/21.

Runes: Crit Chance/Damage not in marks is hideously iinefficient, especially (and you don't seem to know this) as your Ult does not crit, it just does damage based off of your attack damage and applies on-hit effects. Crit Chance does absolutely nothing for you, while Amor Pen would increase the damage (as it does Physical damage, since it is based off of a percentage of your physical damage and does not say that it deals it as magical damage). Seals + Glyphs in Crit Chance or damage only gives you like 6% crit chance or 12% crit damage. It's likely better to run Cooldown in Glyphs (for more hungering strikes) and Dodge, Armor, HP/5, or HP for jungle survivability in Seals. You can probably get a bit more Jungle and early level effectiveness out of running Flat HP quints for a bonus ~100 HP at level 1.

1: Save Smite for killing creeps. Don't initiate with them. (Use on Golem when it will kill him, don't use it on him right away) Creeps have health regen, and will nullify some of the damage from Smite.

2: Edit your guide a bit, paragraphing wise. It's definitely a nice guide, but very clustered and hard to read.

I really don't like Warwick on my team with useless summoner skills for me I can do the golem at lvl 1 with cloth armor 2 health pots and I take IGNITE FLASH which are much more useful late game I'd even take ignite exhaust and be even better off and the new Warwick can take lizard right after he clears the non buff camp on your golem side with hunters call and be just fine. Ignite works on creeps too which is also helpful for when you ulti ignite hungering strike if you have enough damage you don't even have to chase that person.

I really don't like Warwick on my team with useless summoner skills for me I can do the golem at lvl 1 with cloth armor 2 health pots and I take IGNITE FLASH which are much more useful late game I'd even take ignite exhaust and be even better off and the new Warwick can take lizard right after he clears the non buff camp on your golem side with hunters call and be just fine. Ignite works on creeps too which is also helpful for when you ulti ignite hungering strike if you have enough damage you don't even have to chase that person.

I used to think like you. However, after some play with both styles (pure pvp summoner spells vs smite) I can say it's not so cut and dried. Sure, you can jungle without smite or rally. But smite does more than make it possible to jungle- it speeds up jungling tremendously. You can cut Further, smite gives you a lot more options for your first item and rune choices.

Think of smite as an extra 10% xp/gold. Late game, when smite is "useless", you will have earned so much extra gold and xp from using it that you be farther ahead than you would have been with ignite.